I rather doubt the devs are sitting around thinking how they can annoy the player base.
They more likely looked at logs of water usage in dungeons and were surprised by the average channel times being so low.
The original plan for water was likely for full channels not people grabbing a single tick of water at specific times to sneak in some free regen.
I doubt your time played in a dungeon is going to increase alot even if people stopped for full drinks 6 times in a dungeon that is around 1 minute of time and I don’t see anyone stopping nearly that often.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that developers might listen to players with intricate knowledge of the game, it’s systems, and it’s classes over random nobodies on the general forums.
SHOCKED! 
The secret forum was never that secret. When Warlocks got reworked in MoP, during an interview with I think Xelnath, he basically said that he gathered a whole bunch of Warlock players and asked for their input on redesigning the Warlock.
Hell, Shinfel, one of the council members introduced back in MoP is pretty much a direct homage to Shinfae, who was a high profile Warlock at the time and was involved in the Warlock rework.
My issue was never that the “secret” forum exists. I think it’s a fantastic thing, and it directly led to the best iteration of a class the game has ever seen.
My issue is that the Devs stopped listening to it.
Edit: Found an article on Xelnath’s website from a couple years back.
https://xelnath.com/2018/05/15/the-mop-warlock-what-you-knew-and-what-you-never-knew-you-missed/
My thoughts are basically who cares? If they don’t listen to these “supposed” streamers/or whatever then they won’t listen to the average player. I think I would give great feedback if given the opportunity considering I have thousands of days played in this game but hey…like I said.
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Well, the thing is that these forums are supposed to be for players to give feedback. However if we are being ignored and not talked to at all about things all because there is a secret forum that only a few “deeply invested” players are invited and allowed to converse with the Devs then we here at the regular forum have a bigger problem than no communication.
We are not receiving communication, don’t know if our feedback is even being read or considered and worse than that we are being shut out of where the real conversations are happening.
To some this doesn’t matter at all because they will play the game anyway. However some care enough about their subscriptions and real life money they invest that they themselves want in on the action so to speak and are not being satisfied.
Having worked on an open feedback area for a previous MMO I understand completely why those areas are limited in users but even beyond that I also understand when the devs have to say no regarding certain feedback.
I would assume most civil posts are actually looked at by the blizzard community team and relevant feedback is filtered through to the development team. But you need to understand everyone has a different view of what WoW is and what you think its good for the game other person could think is toxic. I personally would enjoy more heroic-mythic raid difficulty content in various group sizes (1,3,5,7,10+) but the current development path has a cap on the difficulty of single player content (I think hugely difficult world content would be fun for me).
I would like a tuning option for world content to double-triple open world mob dps and add new abilities, in exchange for better rewards obviously more hp is fine too. Other people would consider that content unfair (as I can fight more difficult encounters than them for better rewards).
In the end the devs make content that appeals to as many players as possible in single player format and then multiple different difficulties of group content to appeal to people who want harder content.
I know for a fact that isn’t the case. Your feedback on here is not ignored. I might have also seen or been a part of a few hidden forum stuff that the general public doesn’t know about at some point perhaps. But it’s not like the CMs just look solely at that stuff and not at the stuff on here. What’s said on here is definitely taken into account.
They have said in the past that they don’t usually respond in GD, and also they tend to not look into class forums - as there are mega threads there that go ignored. Even then, CMs are not devs - and they’re not the best people to be talking to people about issues pertaining to specific class, spec, or specific design.
I don’t mind it, just look at these forums. All this outrage over a transmog, you think they actually get very few good ideas from this place? So I have no issue with them having a private forum for people who are actually capable of objectively talking about the game and it’s real issues.
If what was said on here was treated as equally then there would be no need for a secret forum would there?
I mean a secret forum would limit the number of replies to a topic but still everyone here subs to the game so most want to feel like they are being heard.
Also by heard I mean heard by the company we support, not necessarily the forum community itself that is full of toxicity and trolls and of course popcorn. Lol